Old Building Shouldn’t Have Antiquated Security System

Old Building Shouldn’t Have Antiquated Security System Some buildings old enough and valuable enough to be on the National Register of Historic Places live with outdated security systems that fail to provide the buildings or their occupants with adequate protection.

Although trustees of old buildings may want to upgrade old fire and security systems, they usually aren’t interested in tearing up or physically altering the appearance of the buildings they wish to preserve. Trustees and owners of valued historical buildings will be interested to know that wireless security systems can be installed where other equipment would do too much damage to the structure or the historical integrity of the building.

The market is out there, but an obstacle keeps some dealers from pursuing it. “People stay away from historic buildings because they’re afraid of making a mistake,” says Bob Rindahl of Arrowhead Security Systems, Inc. in Duluth, Minn. “They think they will ruin the old building during the installation. But with wireless systems you only have to drill little holes, which do very little damage. You’re not going to ruin anybody’s century-old oak door jambs with wireless transmitters.”

His case in point is the vintage 1908 Hartley Building in Duluth. With seven commercial and two residential tenants, this octogenarian building now has security needs that weren’t dreamed of when it was built. The CareTaker Plus control panel from Interactive Technologies, Inc.

Owners and trustees of historic buildings will be interested to know what wireless systems have to offer. The Hartley Building in Duluth, Minn., has residential and commercial tenants, so the installation of wireless sirens and sensors was especially attractive. If historic buildings are open to the public, the shorter installation times required of wireless systems will mean no lost revenues due to closing for installation.

(ITI) monitors wireless motions, glassbreak sensors, door contacts, smoke sensors, and hand-held keypads as well as a hardwire keypad and an Interrogator Alarm Verification module.

Residential tenants like the ability to use their telephones or wireless keypads to arm and disarm apartment sensors without having to leave their apartment at night to go to the control panel. They also like the panic feature on the hand-held touchpads and the easy installation of plug-in sirens.

“We’re providing about three times the protection of the old hardwire system, which we installed in 1982,” Rindahl says. He was able to use wireless in the three-story building in spite of its concrete floors and 12-inch thick walls of wire mesh and lathe-plus approximately 40 leaded glass windows.

Tenants can even use the panic feature of hand-held keypads as they walk to the parking lot, 75 feet from the front door. Wireless transmitters reach the control panel through the leaded glass without any difficulty.

The historic preservation market is out there, and wireless technology has the range, the flexibility and the safe installation capabilities that building owners and trustees are looking for.